'Goner' Today, and Forgotten

“Why bother to code a clever and long-lived virus when a stupid one that spreads for an hour or two gets just as much attention from antiviral experts and the media?” (Uh-oh! An anti-virus company’s marketing flack warns that Goner is coming back! Better pay big bucks to the anti-virus companies, to protect you from clicking…

Wheaton's Trek to Respectability

Wil Wheaton, the actor whose Star Trek character inspired the newsgroup alt.ensign.wesley.die.die.die, has long been geekdom’s favorite whipping boy. “But now, thanks to a self-coded, shamelessly dorky website, many of the same folks who loathed Wheaton on the show are finding out he’s a whole lot like them in real life.” —Wheaton’s Trek to Respectability…

Is the Revolution Over?

A flashback to the Silicon Valley excesses of 1998, before the bubble burst: “There are headhunters who handle only Cobol programmers from Singapore, and headhunters who specialize in luring toy-company executives, and, I’ve recently learned, a headhunting firm that helps other headhunting firms hunt for headhunters.” Po Bronson —Is the Revolution Over?Wired)

The Internet Under Siege

“Under the guise of protecting private property, a series of new laws and regulations are dismantling the very architecture that made the Internet a framework for global innovation.” Lawrence Lessig —The Internet Under Siege (Foreign Policy Magazine)

Language: The Ultimate User Interface

“[L]anguage is often under-estimated, under-valued, and under-funded. How many times have we seen companies import bland, cheap information instead of hiring talented, knowledgeable writers to write fresh, original, interesting content?” Julia Hayden —Language: The Ultimate User InterfaceA List Apart)

Parody? Activism? Lies?

Which is real and which is fake? The website behind curtain number one?  Or the website behind curtain number two? Read about The Yes Men, who use a fake World Trade Organization website to trick the organizers of an international conference. (See: “Evaluating Online Sources.“)Parody? Activism? Lies?

Word Processors: Stupid and Inefficient

“MS Word has no right to be a standard for document preparation, since it’s clearly less efficient (for most purposes) than readily available alternatives,” fumes Allin Cottrell.  —Word Processors: Stupid and Inefficient If the alternative involves typing commands like “c:\gs\gsview\epstool -b -c -o%1.tmp.eps %1.eps”, is it easier to sell your soul to Microsoft? (See: “Using…

Salvaging Electronic Last Words

E-mail messages, voice-mail recordings and other electronic traces of people were routinely preserved by computer networks or telephone companies… These e-relics often captured a moment in time that is both beautiful and chilling to the people who discovered them. Ariana Eunjung Cha —Salvaging Electronic Last Words (WashPost)

The End of Homemade Websites

“Traditionally, each company has had to design and implement all of the services it wanted to offer its website users. This approach leads to incredible waste, unprofitable websites, and lowered usability…”  [Jakob Nielsen is talking about e-commerce, not personal home pages.] —The End of Homemade Websites (UseIT.com)

Why Metadata is Important

Metadata “collects critical information such as heading, summary, author name, date of publication, classification, keywords, etc…. Without metadata a document is left floating in a cyberspace filled with 550 billion other documents. The chances of it being found by the right person at the right time are greatly diminished.” Gerry McGovern —Why Metadata is Important